The gorgeous dance floor competed with the tapestry-covered walls and hand-stitched curtains, yet it wasn’t overshadowed. The glossy wood created the motif of the Hawk crest inlaid with oak, cherry, and ash.

The black velvet curtains gleamed with diamonds sewn into the fabric, and everywhere I looked, the emblem of my capturers gilded wall panels and ceiling architraves.

There was no denying who this room belonged to, nor the wealth it had taken to acquire it.

“Like what you see, Weaver?” Cut never stopped as we stormed toward something large and covered by black sheeting in the middle of the empty expanse.

There were no chairs or banquet tables. Only acres of flooring with no one to dance. Loneliness and echoing eeriness swirled like invisible threads, tainting what would happen with its chequered history.

There’d been good times and bad in this place. Wine spilled with laughter and blood shed with tears.

Goosebumps darted over my flesh, almost as if I stepped through the time-veil. Able to see previous generations dancing, hear their lilting voices on the air.

And then I saw them.

Cut grunted as I slammed to a stop, zeroing in on the portraits he’d told me about in Africa.

The Hawk women.

Unlike the dining room with its over-crowded walls of men in white wigs, chalky faces, and gruffly stern expressions, the Hawk women bestowed the ballroom with class.

Their faces held colour of pink cheeks and red lips. Their hair artfully coiled and curled. And their dresses tumbled through the artist’s brush-strokes, almost as if they were real.

Cut let me look. “Beautiful, aren’t they?”

I didn’t reply. I couldn’t. I was overwhelmed with antiquity and yesteryear.

He let me survey his family’s history while I searched for the portrait that’d caught my eye. I needed to look upon the woman who started it all.

I can’t find her.

Bonnie.

She found me first.

Her painting hung vibrantly, royally. She’d posed with a white poodle and an armful of lilies. Her face unlined and youthful vitality hinting at a woman of early forties rather than the ancient ninety-one-year old who’d just perished.

Up and up the family tree my gaze soared, over Joans and Janes and Bessies.

And finally, at the very top, overseeing her realm and all that she helped create and conquer was Mabel Hawk.

The shadowy sketch wasn’t as intricate in detail as the rest. Her grandson, William, could only remember so much, commissioning the painting off memory. But the intensity of her gaze popped full of soul even if her features weren’t drawn with precision. She looked like any other woman from the bygone era. Any other mother and grandmother. Her gown of simple brown velvet held a single diamond at her bosom while her cheekbones swept into her hairline.

She reminded me of Jethro in a way. The same potency of sovereignty and power.

“Drink it in, my dear.” Cut let go of my hair, running his fingers along my collar. “This room will be the last thing you ever see.”

I still didn’t respond. I’d taken so much from him, and I refused to give it back in the form of begging and tears.

Time ticked onward, but Cut didn’t hurry me. I let the portraits on the wall tell their story, filling me with timeworn relics, ensuring when the time came to bow on my knees and succumb to the guillotine’s blade, I would be more than just a girl, more than a Weaver, more than a victim of the Debt Inheritance.

I would be history.

I would be part of something so much bigger than myself and would take mementoes from this life to the next.

The room slowly filled with witnesses. Black Diamond brothers trickled in, lining the walls with their black leather. Out the corner of my eye, I noticed a few with bloody knuckles and shadow-bruised jaws. Why had they fought within their ranks? What had caused their violent disruption?

The oppressive summoning from the hidden apparatus in the ballroom pressed deeper and deeper the longer I ignored it. The portraits had been studied, the room scrutinized—I had nothing left to capture my attention away from the monolithic mysterious thing.

Cut turned me to face it. “Would you like to see below the cloak?” He smiled tightly. “I’m sure your imagination has created a version of what exists before you.”

I straightened my spine. “Whatever you do to me, it won’t bring them back.”

He stiffened.

The gentle squeak of a wheel broke the brackish silence. I looked over my shoulder as Jasmine suddenly propelled herself into the room, slipping quickly over polished wood with a horrified expression. “What the hell do you think you’re doing?”

Cut turned around, dropping his touch to land on my lower back. He didn’t hold me in place, but I wasn’t idiotic to think I wasn’t trapped and unable to move.

“I’m doing what needs to be done.”

Jasmine wheeled herself right up to Cut’s knees. Her beautiful face pinched with disbelief. “No! That isn’t your task. It’s Jet—I mean, Daniel’s.”

Cut narrowed his eyes, looking between the two of us. “Fuck.” He ducked down, grabbing his daughter roughly by the chin. “You knew, too. You knew all the fuck along Jethro and Kestrel were alive.” He shook her. “What sort of daughter are you? What sort of loyalty do you have toward your own flesh and blood?”

Jasmine chopped her hands on Cut’s wrists, breaking his hold on her cheeks. “My loyalty is to the right thing. And this is not right! Stop it. Right now.”